Preliminary study of safety evaluation for commercial fermented food:yogurt drinks

Yoghurt drink is a type of fermented food that is available in Malaysia. As none yoghurt drink is not manufactured in traditional way, there is little concern towards its safety compared to any other traditionally manufactured Malaysian fermented food. This research is carried out to determine the safety of yoghurt drinks that are available in Malaysia. There are five different brands of yoghurt samples from five different companies were obtained for testing. Three aspects of food safety that are tested in this rstudy in which are chemical safety, biological safety and physical safety. Chemical safety for all yoghurt samples is determined through the detection of concentration of selected heavy metals; lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and mercury (Hg). The biological safety is determined using obtaining numbers of the colony forming unit of microorganism. Gram staining was performed to observe the bacteria visually. Physical safety was carried out through obtaining the pH of the samples. The results of this study show that Pb concentration in four samples exceeds the maximum allowed limit of 2.0 mg/L set by Malaysia Food Act 1983 (MFA1983). However, the concentration of Cd and Hg in all samples did not exceed the maximum allowed limit posed by MFA 1983 which are 1.0 mg/L for Cd and 0.05 mg/L for Hg. In microbial testing, the number of bacteria did not exceed the microbial standards posed by microbiological standards of MFA1983. Physical testing also reveals that all samples show pH for around 4.6. However, this study is not complete because several testing needed to be used for food safety evaluation.